Category Archives: Skype for Business Tools

Back in 2014 I released a tool named LURIA designed to lookup assigned numbers and policies for Lync\Skype objects. You can find the original HERE.

Once the CSMeeting cmdlet was introduced it became clear that I needed an update. So why has it taken so long? Simply because I wanted to introduce the ability to EDIT the looked up items directly in the Data Grid.

So what’s new in V2.0?

With LURIA 2.0 it’s possible to edit items on mass. I have included the editing of the following fields in the grid view:-

SIP Address

Line Uri

Dial Plan

Voice Policy

Conference Policy

Location Policy

Client Policy

External Access Policy

Mobility Policy

PIN Policy

Hosted Voicemail Policy

Another new addition is the ability to open the grid view as a .csv

How does it work?

Click on the Load button (depending on how many entries are found this could take a few seconds. My direct access connection to the office with around 500 entries takes under 15 seconds). You may get a Not Responding notice, if so please be patient..

Search for the entry you are looking for

Edit as needed (currently a tab is needed to register edited info)

Click Commit, the displayed data now represents only the changes fields

You could load up again by clicking the Load button (please remember that it can take some seconds before the committed changes are ready, I usually wait 10 seconds before Loading again)

What do you call the collection of all the add-on items one can add to a Skype for Business solution?

Additive? Add-On? Supplement? Additions? I prefer bells and whistles, its descriptive and yet so elusive.

Every Skype for Business solution has some sort of bell and\or whistle. Be that some sort of video conferencing solution, Contact Center or IP Phone. What I find difficult is clearly representing these when architecting an environment in Visio. Wouldn’t it be useful to have all these sorts of supplemental components were in a visio stencil for quick access. And so the stencil is born. The theme is based on the same theme used through the Skype for Business 2015 – Visio Stencil (an updated V2.0 will be out soon)

I have also added a second shape for most of the products in the template. The reason for this is that often a Visio is used on larger screens that afford a little more detail.

In some instances I have added additional shapes for the sake of variety of choice. For example:

And of course a special mention for all the really cool endpoints, such as :-

If you have any additional requests (or corrections.. I don’t actually know all of these products intimately) please do reach out to me.

A few months back a new pet project resulted in an application called Skype for Business Monitoring Tool. Simply stated this application is a series of synthetic transactions in a PowerShell wrapper. The tool will run a selection of tests then report the results to the local event log.

Shortly after that a reporting module was added. The reporting module will compile an email report covering the previous 24 hour cycle of tests. The report includes a success vs failure rate and colour codes the ratio either green, amber or red to indicate health for each test in question.

What’s new in V1.3?

The following features have been added:-

Alert emailing

This is an alert email that is generated at the end of a test cycle if any of the synthetic transactions fail. The email consist of the Event ID and description of the error (the format is rough at present but server its purpose well – a review of this is planned)

TIP

Since the FROM address isn’t checked for validity, I like to use this address to identify the Customer or Pool that’s reporting the issues. That way I can write an email rule that automatically deals with messages according to my required behaviour (eg escalate or also send to etc.). Of course you need to be sure that your email scrubbing policies allow these through.

More Tests

A total of 24 tests are now available, that equates to 12 new tests introduced in this release. These include:-

Group IM

Application Sharing

Persistent Chat

Data Conferencing

UCWA Conferencing

Web App Conferencing

Web App Anonymous Conferencing

Web Scheduler

XMPP

Audio Video Edge

Mobility IM

PSTN Peer-to-Peer

New “About”

A ReadMe.htm file now contains all the “About” information, version details, event ID references and notes. The ReadMe.htm file is also sent by email as the test email function